Setup: Storage (RAID, iSCSI, Virtual & Real Drives)
Storage Options
I briefly rounded the storage section on the initialization page, but there is quite a bit more to show here. Thecus has a great line-up of features starting with the basic RAID array creation and management.
The colouring makes the selection easy as you can see which drives are in use, which you have chosen, and which are unused.
The RAID mode and file system choice is down to you, and it depends on your personal needs and the available drives. A good setup is a RAID 5 configuration for a fault-tolerance of one drive coupled with BTRFS for snapshots.
You got the options between EXT4, ZFS, and BTRFS as file system and you can encrypt the entire volume too while creating it. Master RAID is needed for your primary volume, should you have more than one, and Quick RAID is highly recommended to check. It will improve the RAID build time significantly.
Drive Details
You also have access to all the drive information within this section. You can view the basic information or the detailed SMART values. You can also run short and long self-tests on the drives.
iSCSI
Whether you want to share your storage pool via traditional shared folders or jump on the iSCSI bandwagon is up to you, you have both options.
You can define the authentication settings, names, and types throughout the creation pages.
Virtual Drives
It is a qualified guess that you’ll want to store some of your optical mediums on your NAS too, with all the storages space it has. Creating backups of disks and saving them as ISO files is a convenient way of storage, but not so much on the access – usually. ThecusOS can mount these ISO files as shared folders, allowing you to use them as mounted drives on your target systems.
Wipe and Clone
Two great bonus features are the disk wipe and disk clone features. The names give the functionality away and I don’t think that I need to explain either in more detail.
Was there any testing or investigating into what the 2.5 hard drive connector in the top of the unit can be used for?
I bought one of this for half price on the chance the 5th drive connector was usable: and it is! You can use it as a boot drive or a cache drive or for a parity check drive. You can also flash the in-built MMC drive with a different OS. If you buy one I strongly suggest doing so, as the OS from Thecus is an ancient bug-ridden under-developed barely-supported mess. No, really, the version in the box is Fedora 12, and there’s an upgrade to effectively Fedora 16. I recommend using OpenMediaVault instead.
Thanks for the confirmation that the 5th SATA part indeed is fully working.
Is it possible to use the display and the buttons with an alternative linux distibution like debian? Is it possible too, to control the fan (with fancontrol package)?
Thx
John,
I’m on my 3rd thecus NAS. The first was a W5810(windows storage server) which I could not get to work correctly; got an RMA then resold. the second was/is the N4810; same as before, it did not work correctly, got an RMA, but was not able to secure a reasonable (?) resale price. So, I’m keeping it.
Regarding the 5th drive, I was not able to access a connected drive installed in my initial N4810. Tech USA told me that that drive was not powered by the backplane since the 2 on-board SATA chips only supported two HDs each (only 4 of the 5 slots on the backplane -the ones directly accessable from the front bays). their info was that the 5th could be used only if powered by a separate Sata controller that connects to the DOM (MMC drive?).
So, my question(s) to you:
– how are you powering that drive (I guess as your new boot)
– where is the DOM (under the HD cage?) and is that the alternative power source for the 5th drive, and
– if you flash the DOM for another OS, is there any other way to power the 5th drive or force it to be read by the system?
Sorry to be so long, but still looking to see how best to use this machine. I agree with you in respect to it being under-developed.
Is it possible to use the display and the buttons with an alternative linux distibution like debian? Is it possible too, to control the fan (with fancontrol package)?
Thx
Hello,
I have the same questions to John like Thomas.
I am very interested in this NAS and would like to use the 5th SATA connector for a system SSD to boot a debian or ubuntu server linux.